


We'll Finally Relax

by Emby_M



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Aging, Banking the Old American Art, Canonical Character Death, Chronic Pain, Found Family, Hosea's POV, M/M, References to Suicide, References to self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 07:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: The robbery is going well as far as Hosea can tell. They have the money, he can see it loaded onto Arthur's and Dutch's shoulders. Even as Milton digs his fingers into his collar, Hosea smiles at Arthur, his son. John peeks out of the door of the bank, snarling about the law. Hosea smiles at him too. His precious precious sons. His precious precious family, he thinks, watching them all through the edifice of the bank.-Hosea is confronted by Milton, and thinks some final thoughts about his husband and their family.





	We'll Finally Relax

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tacituskilgore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacituskilgore/gifts).



He'd had-

A good feeling about this, hadn't he?

Hosea grips Abigail's hand tighter. The moment dawns on her face as they are pulled apart, pulled apart by three Pinkertons -- Pinkertons?

One grabs her around the waist and pulls her down from the cart. The other two grab him, yanking him away. For a moment, their hands grip and catch.

Abigail stares, open mouthed, at him.

Like she's remembered everything she's been working for. Like the fear and terror of a job had come back.

Hosea had spent a lot of time coaxing her here. Convincing her that not a hair on Jack's or John's or Arthur's head would be hurt. But he was wrong, because he'd never mentioned that _she_ wouldn't.

He shouts at them -- _don't you know she's a mother, don't hurt her!_ \-- but the Pinkertons are grabbing him away and talking amongst themselves, about him, before he can help her or fight. 

He's too frail to fight back these days. He knows it, how each day is more time he has to spend time sitting, resting. How there are more and more days where he doesn't get up at all, can't dress himself because his fingers will lock up and won't button buttons. How there are more and more moments where he coughs and coughs until there's no air left in his lungs. 

There's no fighting back. Abigail disappears behind the cart, thrown into the dirt. If John had seen it, the way she was manhandled, tackled to the ground like a sow ready for slaughter, they'd have all seen why John was often called feral, rabid. Hosea bucks the hands of the Pinkertons, but not for very long, just for long enough to make a show of it.

Still, it's not... like he's worried. Not really. He'd felt so confident about this whole proposition, about this last heist. A big showy bank robbery was what they needed. The fact the Pinkertons had shown up -- well, that was trouble, but they had gotten out of this trouble before. They could outsmart the Pinkertons again.

The men mumble between themselves -- there's hubbub in the bank, as there is supposed to be, and Hosea is handed from man to man who say things like -- _isn't that him?_ and _Oh, give him to Milton_.

And he is shoved from one set of hands to the next until he is gripped by the lapel by good old Agent Milton. Agent Milton who tugs him close and grins like a cat in front of an uncaged canary. 

"Dutch!" he calls, "Dutch Van der Linde!"

The robbery is going well as far as Hosea can tell. They have the money, he can see it loaded onto Arthur's and Dutch's shoulders. Even as Milton digs his fingers into his collar, Hosea smiles at Arthur, his son. John peeks out of the door of the bank, snarling about the law. Hosea smiles at him too. His precious precious sons. His precious precious family, he thinks, watching them all through the edifice of the bank.

If they just get this job done -- 

Arthur and Abigail and John and Jack can relax. Can take a portion and go make their own home. Dutch will certainly complain, will certainly even weep, but Hosea will tell him -- no, let them go. They love you enough that they can go forth.

The little family they had spent so long protecting will break apart -- they will all scatter to the winds, Lenny and Sean and Karen in one direction, Micah and Bill in one other -- Javier and Charles would go somewhere too, and Mrs Adler, and Pearson and Orville, and, and, and well-

Hosea and Dutch will go somewhere and finally relax. Dutch won't have to worry about much -- oh he'll worry, and there will be just as many nights where he'll ponder if his existence is worth anything, and he will still have nightmares about being in church and his mother dying of scarlet fever, and he will still wind his two watches every morning without fail; but he will not have to worry if he is doing enough for his cobbled-together family. He will just have to worry about him and Hosea, and what they'll eat for dinner, and if Hosea is warm enough that his joints don't creak-

And Hosea watches Pieter come to the window, eyes wide, watching his partner. 

His hand comes up to the window, and in the light of the afternoon, sunshine glints off the wedding band that sits on his finger. The bag filled with money looks like it weighs two hundred pounds on Pieter's broad shoulder.

And Hosea is reminded that, despite what they thought, and despite all the nights Hosea gently cleaned Dutch's self-inflicted wounds, or hid every gun Dutch owned, or dulled all the blades in the tent to shit so they couldn't cut, Hosea was always going to die first.

Dutch sits by his bedside too often for either of them to have any illusions about it. Pieter has clasped Hosea's hands to his trembling lips too often, tears rolling down their cheeks, for them to pretend otherwise.

He just... didn't think it would be like this.

Milton grabs the back of his collar now, pushes him forward. Abigail is in the corner of his vision, being escorted away. 

"Dutch! Dutch, get out here, now!" Milton calls, shoving Hosea forward. Hosea nearly swats backwards at Milton, but he has the good sense to resist that urge. He puts his hands up instead. 

The cold metal of a gun pressed behind his ear is like a shot of strong whiskey first thing in the morning. Any flush he might have gained in the tussle with the Pinkertons leeches out through that muzzle. 

Pieter's expression changes just as Hosea feels his own face drop. 

They both understand.

They both-

Understand.

But they've- 

They've been through things like this before. And Hosea doesn't say it -- never says it because it's so foolish to, especially to a man who only believes in bad luck, but Hosea believes in his good luck. He has seen thousands of people over time, shaped and molded by its forces. And Hosea knows he is one of the luckier out there. Not in cards or dice, not directly like that, but just lucky in that -- if he hopes, it will be.

"Mister Milton!" the voice of his husband calls out. It's too shaky. Too weak. Too timid. Reminds Hosea too much of the boy who tried to rob him, that dead-eyed kid who had sold his every earthly belonging just to pay for his parents' funerals. "Let my- my friend go --"

Milton snorts a derisive laugh behind Hosea's shoulder. He resists the urge once more to reach back and backhand Agent Milton, and resists the urge even more as he scans the faces of his odd family in the windows. 

None of them move. They are all frozen stock still, staring back at Hosea in open fear.

"Let my friend go, or people are going to get shot unnecessarily!" Dutch shouts, his rich voice cracking. Milton must know. 

He and Dutch were an open secret. Although, they weren't trying to keep it a secret. People found out as they found out, or ignored it as they saw fit. There were many moments where they'd be gloriously naked, Dutch's head pillowed on Hosea's slim thigh, ecstatically post-coital, laughing about how folks in the newspapers wrote about them. "Longtime partners" and "bosom buddies" and "criminal chums" but never the simple truth which was: husbands.

They didn't keep it a secret that they had married at Clemens Point, when all was well and they were not afraid and things were looking up. That they had slipped down into the water there, pants rolled up above their knees like schoolboys, and placed rings on each other's fingers in the dying light of day, and had smiled at each other like nothing else mattered. And it didn't then, and in some way, it doesn't now.

But Hosea had forgotten that kind of love was seen as weakness. And this family was full of people who were scared to love so much again -- Dutch, Arthur. Javier. Bill. Micah shook with it, the need to love and the hatred of it. 

"Your friend!" Milton jeers, "Now why would I do that?"

Milton must know, now, that Hosea was Dutch's dearest friend. His confidante and partner through life. That if you undid Hosea-

Hosea wants to leave behind a ghost. 

They both know, God, they both know he's going to die first, but Hosea knows it will undo Dutch if he dies by some tragedy. Sometimes in the dead of night Hosea has considered killing himself just to viciously see what the hell Dutch would do -- if he'd follow in his wake, if he would finally understand the kind of pain he'd inflict on Hosea if he ever succeeded. 

Hosea wants to leave behind a ghost to keep helping his husband along, to encourage the man to do better and be better and live well. All of this -- the outlaw stuff and the revolutionary stuff and the getting back at the systems which had kept them all down -- it was secondary to living a life beside the man who had completed his heart, who had filled that small and sad and lonely part of himself which had always felt -- _maybe I will never find someone_.

And he's always been selfish -- known he had his husband's heart, that there was no one who knew the man like Hosea does, but jealousy and fear gripped his heart because no- no, don't take away the thing that fulfills me, that brings me such peace, that's enlivened my life, don't replace me in his heart so I am irrelevant and replaceable, just as I always was and always have been.

Milton is speaking behind him but Hosea's mind is in the pain in his knees, how tired his arms are getting. He's fifty-nine years old, too old for all this, and he is now watching his husband. After all, what else would he watch?

And Dutch is saying something now -- something about America; it strikes Hosea as ironic, the kind of bitterly choked on thing Pieter will spit late at night recounting his mother and his father and Anja and how no one is looked at the same, and if you are hated at least you're noticed but if you're unwanted, well-

Hosea's back and knees hurt. Today was a bad day, but it was good enough that he could do some of the bigger buttons on his clothes. Pieter had had to do the fine ones on his shirt and cuffs, but it had given them a chance to touch and caress so early in the morning. He had smiled at his husband, pulled his lapels gently to resettle the tailcoat around his shoulders -- and how handsome he'd looked, fond and very quietly worried. For once, Hosea had not shouldered Dutch's worry. He had not said -- _let me worry about that_. Instead, Hosea had hoped his confidence in it all would have rubbed off on Dutch -- and it had, he saw it in the meeting this morning, but it was gone now. 

Dust swirls and Hosea coughs, rough against his lungs, burning through his windpipe, he doubles a little; Milton's gun follows him down.

If he thinks this is some ploy, then Milton really is a hard-hearted bastard. Not that Hosea won't use this sort of thing to his advantage -- has he played the old card too many times to count? Certainly. But this was not it. The gun is cruel, cold even in the heat of the afternoon.

"I've given you enough chances," Milton says, pushing Hosea hard in the middle of a coughing fit. 

He stumbles, a couple steps. Through teary eyes, he looks up, sees the face of his husband in the bank window -- darts his eyes from one son to the other --

He is...

Standing in the middle of the street. 

The heat. The sun. They cling to his skin, sickly sweet. 

He is the only person here. Some world between. His family is in front of him, dotted in the windows of the bank. They have enough money to go -- to run away and live life peaceful. Or at least as peaceful as they can get. Behind him is the _civilized_ world -- the Pinkertons, the protectors of "justice", their guns trained on each and every person there.

He wants-

He wants to say a few last words to all of them.

He wants to take Arthur into his arms once more, like he did when they boy was fifteen and really understanding the loss of his mother and father. Wants to tell him it will all be alright, wants to kiss his bristled cheeks and tell him so surely that he is a good man. Tell him to value the family he's made with Abigail and John and Jack.

He wants to pull John over too, hold him close. The kid had grown into a man -- with his fault and foibles, sure, but he had become a good father to a marvelous kid. A good husband to a marvelous woman. He had become so much more than the dirty tramp he had joined them as, and yet never left it behind. Wants to tell him to care for his family while he can.

He wants to thank Abigail for bringing such joy to all of them -- wants to thank Jack for being a good kid. Wants to remind him and her to keep practicing his reading. He's such a smart boy.

He wants to kiss the cheeks of Josiah one more time, thank him for his friendship. Wants to wrap that old scarf around Susan's neck one last time and tell her just the same -- to take care of Dutch. Just as she'd said to him near a quarter century ago.

Most of all, he wants to run into his husband's arms. Nestle into the safety of his chest, card his fingers into those thick curls and sob with relief that it was all over. He wants to lean up and kiss the man like a madman, for Pieter to laugh sincerely, and for it to all be good.

He won't.

He can't.

The moment he straightens out, the cough tapering off into a rasping gasp-

He knows.

His heart sinks low into his stomach.

He's going to die.

Milton knows that -- without Hosea, there's only part of Dutch. 

If you want to cripple Dutch van der Linde-

Then you shoot Hosea Matthews.

Hosea takes a deep breath in, turns to say something to Milton, and-

**Author's Note:**

> >:,|  
> (If you're wondering about Pieter -- it's not canon. But I refuse to believe a Dutchman's legal first name is Dutch, so Pieter was chosen by tacituskilgore and I as his first name. I'm a big fan of the "your most trusted people are the ones who know your other, private names" trope so that also plays into it.)  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
